The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Over the course of this growth, functional density of the devices has generally increased by the device feature size or geometry has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency, lower costs, and/or improving performance. Such scaling down has also increased the complexities of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized similar developments in IC fabrication are needed.
Likewise, the demand for increased performance and shrinking geometry from ICs has brought the introduction of multi-gate devices. These multi-gate devices include multi-gate fin-type transistors, also referred to as finFET devices, so called because the channel is formed on a “fin” that extends from the substrate. FinFET devices may allow for shrinking the gate width of device while providing a gate on the sides and/or top of the fin including the channel region.
Another manner improving the performance of a semiconductor device is to provide stress on or strain in pertinent regions of the device. For example, inducing a higher tensile strain in a region provides for enhanced electron mobility, which may improve performance. Thus, what is desired are fabrication methods and devices that provide for stress/strain in regions of a finFET device.